Unjustified threats in Australian copyright law

Are they actionable? It seems so, according to this report via Mallesons' always-interesting Whiteboard IPblog. Does this mean that Australian law gives a remedy unknown in our copyright statute? Not entirely clear - but what does come through in this report is that an injustice was perpetrated by someone laying claim to rights in a work that rightly belonged to someone else. That seems to have been what the court decided, in which case it is just the sort of unpleasant bullying that the intellectual property system encourages. As the rights become more valuable, and the costs of enforcement become greater, the abuse of IP rights develops into a bigger and bigger problem.

Soon, far from encouraging creativity and inventiveness, IP litigation will take up all the time that people would otherwise devote to such useful activities.